Most marketing agencies will take anyone’s money. If you have a pulse and a credit card, you’re a client.
We don’t work that way. After working with 150+ home service contractors across the US and Canadian markets, we’ve learned exactly who we can help win and who we can’t. And when we take on a client we can’t truly help, everybody loses. They waste money. We waste effort. The relationship ends badly.
So before you ever get on a call with our team, I want to be upfront about who’s not a good fit for Relentless Digital. If you see yourself in this article, I’d rather save us both the time. And if you don’t, you’ll know exactly why a call with us makes sense.
You Don’t Own a Home Service Company
This one is simple. Everything we do is built for home service contractors. Plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing. Our systems, our processes, our team’s experience, all of it is focused on these verticals.
Several of our team members have operated residential HVAC businesses themselves. We know the seasonal cycles. We know what a good booking rate looks like. We know how weather drives demand and how to plan around it.
If you run a restaurant, a law firm, or an e-commerce store, there are agencies that specialize in your world. We’re not one of them, and you deserve a partner who lives in your industry every day like we live in home services.
You’re Under $1M in Annual Revenue
This is the one that surprises people, so let me explain it with a real story.
A few years ago, we signed a client doing $250,000 in annual revenue. They had just gone through a big rebrand, so cash was already tight. I signed them anyway. That was my mistake, not theirs.
The entire year was a struggle. They only had one lead source, SEO, and most contractors need leads from multiple sources to grow. He wanted more leads in the offseason, but that’s not how search works. People search when they have a problem, and in this industry demand follows the weather. Hot and cold spells drive calls. Other channels help fill the gaps in between, but he didn’t have the budget to invest in them.
The client left after the first year. A couple of years later, we talked again. After going through a few more agency relationships, he finally understood what I had been trying to explain. I told him the truth: it would have made more sense for me to educate him for free than to have him pay us for that year.
That experience is a big part of why we set a higher revenue threshold. It’s not about being exclusive. Under $1M, the investment our programs require puts too much pressure on your cash flow, and stripping things out of our programs to make them cheaper would mean cutting the exact things that make them work. That’s not a partnership. That’s a slow-motion breakup.
If you’re under $1M, our answer isn’t “go away.” It’s “not yet.” More on that at the end of this article, because we’ve built a lot of free resources to help you get there faster.
You’re Not Open to Strategic Feedback
Our reporting goes deeper than most agencies. We look at your booking rates, your tech conversion rates, and your average tickets. Then we bring you real insights on how to improve them.
Here’s the thing. Our goal is to help you maximize revenue with less spend. Sometimes the biggest opportunity isn’t more leads. It’s booking more of the calls you already get, or raising an average ticket that’s below where it should be.
If you’re not open to that feedback, we’re not a good fit. We’re not the agency that sends a monthly report full of numbers nobody reads and calls it a day. We want to talk strategy with you. If you just want someone to “do the marketing” while everything else stays exactly the same, we’ll both end up frustrated.
You Jump From Marketing Agency to Marketing Agency Every Year
We’ve all met this contractor. New marketing company every single year, and every single one of them “screwed him over.”
Look, there are bad agencies out there. I’ve written a whole article on the warning signs your agency is failing you. But when a contractor has burned through four agencies in four years, the agencies usually aren’t the whole story. There’s almost always a reason a contractor isn’t successful, and it’s not always the agency’s fault.
Marketing takes time to compound. SEO especially. If you reset the clock every 12 months, you never let anything work. And if you walk in the door already convinced we’re going to screw you over, no amount of results will change that story in your head.
Our Deal-Breakers, In Plain English
Before we get to who is a good fit, here are the moments that make our team say “this isn’t going to work,” no matter how big the company is.
- Asking us to strip core deliverables out of a program to hit a lower price. We covered why above. Cutting the things that make the program work isn’t a discount, it’s a setup for failure.
- Wanting more leads while refusing to get on a strategy call. If we don’t know what’s happening in your business, we’re guessing, and you’re paying for guesses.
- Blaming marketing for calls your CSR team isn’t booking. We’ll show you the booking rate data. If the phone rings and jobs aren’t landing on the board, more leads won’t fix that.
- Treating the first 90 days of SEO as the verdict on the entire engagement. Marketing compounds. Judging it before it can is how contractors end up on their fifth agency in five years.
None of these are about revenue size. They’re about mindset, and mindset is the thing we can’t fix for you.
So Who IS a Good Fit?
The contractors who win with us have a few things in common.
| You Might NOT Be a Great Fit IfтАж | You Might Be a Great Fit IfтАж |
| You run a business outside the home service trades | You own a home service company (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing) |
| You’re under $1M in annual revenue and cash flow is tight | You’re at or above $1M in annual revenue and ready to invest in growth |
| You want an agency to “do the marketing” without ever talking strategy | You’re open to strategic feedback on booking rates, conversion rates, and average tickets |
| You ignore insights and skip strategy calls | You’re involved in the business (or have a primary contact who is) and you show up to strategy calls |
| You switch agencies every year and reset the clock before anything compounds | You’re committed to executing a long-term strategy built together |
| You expect marketing to fix operational problems on its own | You understand marketing and operations work together (like techs asking for reviews in the home) |
They’re involved in their business, or they have a primary contact who is. They want the detailed insights we share, and they actually use them.
They’re open to the ideas we present and committed to executing the strategy we build together.
They show up to strategy calls. This one matters more than people think. When our team stays closely aligned with what’s happening in your business, we can adjust fast. If your board is slow, we have levers we know how to pull: campaigns to your open estimates, tune-up pushes, open repairs sitting in your CRM. But we can only pull those levers if we know your board is slow.
They also understand that marketing and operations are connected. Take reviews. We can automate your review requests, but your techs still need to serve customers well and ask in the home. That combination is what drives a great review response rate, and those reviews push your rankings up on Google Maps and in AI search. We can’t do that part for you, and any agency that says they can is lying to you.
On the Fence? Here’s What I’d Tell You
Maybe you’re at $1.5M, you’ve been burned by an agency before, and you’re reading this thinking, “Sure, every agency says they’re different.”
Fair. Every agency claims to be the best marketing agency for contractors, so instead of claiming it, here’s what I’d want you to know before you get on a call with our team.
We’re built on high-touch, white-glove service. We want to meet with you and talk real strategy, not just read numbers off a screen. Our team includes people who have run residential HVAC companies, so we understand the cycle and flow of your business and build your strategy around it.
And I’ll be straight with you about the other side of it. A core part of what we do is fix and improve your online presence, and that takes time and buy-in from you. If someone promises you the moon in 30 days, run. And don’t take my word for any of this. Search Relentless Digital reviews and see what contractors say about working with us before you ever book a call.
Under $1M? Free Resources to Grow Your Contracting Business
If you’re not at $1M yet, we still want to help you get there. That’s why we put out fresh content every single day.
I wrote The Relentless Operator to help contractors build businesses that run without chaos. Our podcast, Service Business Mastery, has over 600 episodes covering nearly every problem you’ll hit on the way up. Our YouTube channel and social media are full of content built for contractors at your stage.
The resource section on our website covers things you can do right now for free, like how to get your business verified on Google, how to optimize your Google Business Profile, and how to grow on social media. And from September through May, we host a live webinar on a new topic every single month.
Use it all. It’s free. And when you cross $1M, call us.
Ready to Grow Your Home Service Business?
If you read this whole article, saw yourself in the good-fit parts, and still want to talk, you’re probably our kind of client. Let’s have a conversation. . No pressure, no hard sell. Just a real talk about your business and whether we can help you grow it.
Contact Relentless Digital and let’s see if we’re a fit.
